The Town That Dreams in Unison

No one locked their doors in Willowmere. They didn’t need to.

At midnight every night, the streets emptied, the lamps dimmed, and the town drifted together into slumber. It was not ordinary sleep. Every citizen, from the newborn in the cradle to the mayor in his fine house on the hill, shared the same dream. A meadow stretched under a violet sky. Golden birds trilled endless songs. A river shimmered like liquid glass, its surface rippling without wind. In the dream, all burdens fell away. Pain, grief, hunger, guilt—gone.

To live in Willowmere meant never fearing nightmares. To live in Willowmere meant belonging.

And yet Mara did not belong.

She arrived in early autumn, when the maples blazed red and the chill of evening crept over the hills. She rented the lonely cottage on the town’s edge, carrying with her only a battered suitcase and a stack of books. The locals welcomed her with polite smiles, curious glances, and that same strange phrase repeated again and again:

“You’ll dream with us tonight.”

Mara thought it odd, but charming in its way. A small-town superstition, maybe, like knocking on wood or tossing salt over your shoulder. She nodded, smiled, and tried not to notice the way their eyes lingered on her a little too long.

That night, when the clock struck twelve, Mara’s body grew impossibly heavy. She hadn’t meant to sleep, but her vision blurred, her breath slowed, and the world gave way.

She found herself in the meadow.

The grass bent beneath a windless sky, soft as silk. The river glistened, alive with silver sparks. All around her, Willowmere’s people wandered, smiling and carefree. A little girl knelt by the water, cupping a golden fish in her hands. An elderly couple danced barefoot. For a moment, Mara thought she had stumbled into heaven.

But then she saw it.

Beyond the laughing crowd, behind the shimmer of the river, a mass loomed. Black, pulsing, enormous. It twisted like smoke yet clung like tar. No one else seemed to notice. The children laughed, the parents embraced, the golden birds wheeled overhead. But Mara felt it: a suction in the chest, a slow pulling, like her very soul was being siphoned.

She woke with a scream that night, the taste of ash in her mouth.

In the morning, her neighbors greeted her cheerfully. They described the dream in unison—the meadow, the sky, the birds. Their voices were light, almost rehearsed. Not one of them mentioned the shadow.

Mara said nothing.

The second night, she tried to resist. She lit candles, walked laps around her tiny cottage, bit her tongue until blood welled copper on her lips. But when the clock struck twelve, the pull returned stronger, irresistible. Her body dropped into the same meadow.

This time, the darkness moved.

It unfurled tendrils toward her, curling like smoke made of hunger. A voice swelled inside her skull, not in words, but in feeling. You do not belong. You see too much.

Mara stumbled back, heart hammering. No one else turned their heads. They splashed in the river, sang with the birds, blissfully blind.

She woke clawing at her throat, her pillow damp with sweat.

By the third night, Mara knew she had to confide in someone. She sought out the town’s oldest resident, Elias. The blind man sat each morning on his sagging porch, humming tunelessly to himself. His eyes were milk-white, but when Mara approached, he tilted his head as though he had been waiting.

“You don’t dream with them, do you?” she asked.

A smile ghosted his lips. “Not anymore. Age dulls the tether. My mind slips loose before midnight now. Tell me, outsider—what did you see?”

She hesitated, but his blind eyes seemed to pierce her. So she told him everything: the pulsing shadow, the voice, the feeling of being drained.

Elias’s expression darkened.

“It began after the war,” he said. “This town was broken. Families torn apart, fields ruined, hunger everywhere. They prayed—desperate prayers. Something heard them. It promised peace. Escape. And so it bound them in the meadow. A perfect dream.”

“But at a cost,” Mara whispered.

He nodded. “Nothing is free. It feeds. Slowly, gently, so no one notices. But when the harvest is done, Willowmere will be nothing but husks.”

Mara felt the weight of his words settle in her chest. “Then we have to stop it.”

Elias shook his head. “They won’t thank you. They will cling to their dream until the last breath leaves them.”

That night, Mara stood in the meadow’s tall grass, trembling. Around her, the townsfolk twirled, sang, laughed. The shadow swelled at the horizon, a tide of black hunger.

She clenched her fists.

“You’ve had enough,” she whispered.

The shadow quivered, then surged forward. The voice pressed into her skull like thunder. You cannot break what was freely given.

Mara thought of her past. The pain she had carried into Willowmere—the loss of her sister, the nights she spent with nightmares that left her sobbing, the scars no dream could erase. She gathered that agony, sharp and burning, and hurled it at the shadow like fire.

The meadow trembled. The violet sky cracked, bleeding into darkness. The river turned red with sparks. For the first time, the dream fractured.

The townspeople screamed. They clutched their chests, stumbled, and fell. The golden birds scattered. The shadow shrieked—not with words, but with fury.

And then Mara woke.

But so did everyone else.

In the middle of the night, Willowmere was alive with cries. Doors burst open, people wept in the streets. They looked at each other as though seeing strangers for the first time in decades. The dream was gone.

Their eyes turned to Mara.

Not with gratitude. Not with relief.

With fear.

She had ripped away their paradise. She had left them with the weight of their grief, their hunger, their wounds. She had given them back the real world.

And from the corner of her vision, Mara swore she saw the last shred of shadow slither into the dark, retreating—but not gone.